Iraqi Defector Goes Home, To Father-in-Law Hussein

By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: February 21, 1996

CAIRO, Feb. 20—
The Iraqi general and son-in-law to Saddam Hussein whose defection six months ago was seen as a major blow to the Iraqi Government abandoned his exile in Jordan today and returned to Iraq with members of his family.

Lieut. Gen. Hussein Kamel was accompanied by his brother, Col. Saddam Kamel, the former head of Iraq's special forces, and their wives, both of whom are daughters of President Hussein. All were retracing the 700-mile journey they began last summer when they sped to Jordan along the desert highway from Baghdad.

An Iraqi spokesman said that President Hussein had forgiven General Kamel, and that he and those who fled with him would be welcomed back as ordinary citizens.

General Kamel, who since the mid-1980's had headed Iraq's secret weapons program, fled Iraq on Aug. 8 and was quickly granted asylum by King Hussein of Jordan.

But while he had once vowed to topple Iraq's ruler, he had become an increasingly peripheral figure in recent months, shunned by various wings of the Iraqi opposition as an unrepentant henchman for the Baghdad Government, and all but ignored by Jordan and the West.

Before returning to Iraq in a convoy of limousines provided by Jordan, General Kamel told interviewers that he was going home in part because of what he called an "important shift" toward democracy by the Iraqi Government.

But Iraqi opposition figures and Jordanian officials suggested instead that General Kamel's adventure had simply turned sour, and diplomats in the Jordanian capital suggested that his flight originally was motivated mainly by frustration at being excluded from discussions about Iraq's future.

Mr. Hussein has never been known to forgive dissension, having ordered the execution of hundreds of former officials during the nearly quarter-century in which he has ruled Iraq. The official Iraqi media has denounced General Kamel has a traitor, a coward and a thief, and accused him of being an American intelligence agent.

But General Kamel, who said he had written to Mr. Hussein asking permission to return, made clear before departing that he was confident that he would be warmly received. And in the statement issued after the returning party crossed the border tonight from Jordan to Iraq, a spokesman said the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council and the ruling Baath Party agreed in a joint session on Monday to accept General Kamel's request.

"The march of great Iraq is bigger than all false aspirations and bigger than traitors and those who make mistakes," the spokesman said.

With his detailed knowledge of Iraq's clandestine military buildup, General Kamel carried with him a trove of intelligence information vital to the West, which has insisted upon the destruction of Iraqi weapons systems as a prerequisite to lifting United Nations sanctions.

Within days of his defection, the Baghdad Government handed over to United Nations inspectors hundreds of pages of documents containing details about previously concealed weapons programs.

The net effect was to kill any prospect of an early end to the United Nations sanctions. But it has never been clear that General Kamel himself provided valuable information to the West, and his return could arm Mr. Hussein with new ammunition to use against his critics.

In August, General Kamel, who is believed to be about 40 years old, said he had decided to defect after failing to persuade his father-in-law to change policies that he said had led to the "the total isolation of Iraq." As late as December, he condemned what he called Iraq's "one-man rule, with its policy of terror and igniting war."

But in the interviews granted in an apparent attempt to enable his return, General Kamel instead expressed concern that Washington and its Arab allies were working to overthrow the Iraqi Government. He also cited a decree by Mr. Hussein calling for parliamentary elections next month as a reason to go back.

With the welcome given him by Jordan, General Kamel's defection provided the first clear indication that King Hussein was willing to take a stand against Iraq, the powerful neighbor with which Jordan sided during the Persian Gulf war.

But King Hussein's early attempts to boost General Kamel's image as a future leader fizzled in the face of widespread apathy by Iraqi exiles inside Jordan. General Kamel's presence in Jordan became a source of awkwardness as King Hussein attempted to unite other Iraqi exile groups, who have refused to deal with the defector because of the central role he played in the brutal suppression of the rebellion in southern Iraq by Shiite Muslims in 1991 after the Gulf war.

American officials, who were quick to exploit the defection as a sign of division within Iraq's inner circle, made clear they did not regard General Kamel as a palatable alternative to President Hussein.

The Jordanian Government did not express regret at General Kamel's departure. Prime Minister Abdul Karim al-Kabariti issued a statement saying only that the decision to leave was a matter on which the defector and his family "decided on their own after conducting private contacts with Baghdad."